43. September 1917 (part 1)

Peter Lake saw himself for the first time in almost a year, on a flapping grey page, frostbit on the edges, waving at him awkwardly from a lamppost.

It made an infernal sound that drew his attention away from another horrendous attempt to be musical. The paper was farther away than he initially suspected, and Cecil stayed behind to watch over any possible eyewitnesses, so Peter Lake hoped that this was one of those incidents he was still sheepishly unaccustomed to.

It squeaks.

The discovery both shocked and pleased him.

Peter had not acknowledged how long it'd been since he last looked upon his own face until he lay his eyes on this very paper, on the way to the river, following a whispering tug of his beatless heart.

The poster featured a washed-away grey visage, sunken cheeks, black hair, large black eyes. The ghost of a grin, a whispering grimace. Dents on his flesh, under his gaze, lines upon his forehead. A fog of unshaved stubble. Dark clothes. Always.

Peter Lake whispered, out loud: "It's me."

But was he, really? Was he, still?

You're the same you, in every color.

For some reason, now he was half-smiling, staring quietly at the picture of a man who'd been thrown from a bridge and proclaimed dead. For this same man was now wanted alive and brought to Pearly Soames in exchange for a hearty reward.

Wanted… alive…

You're still the same hideous boy with violence in his eyes.

How poetic.

"Are you reading this, love?" The lamplight buzzed and Peter Lake chuckled. "It seems we properly fooled them."

He still wasn't a good liar. He wondered how he'd manage to carry a lie like this until the little red-haired girl was found, and his miracle hopefully delivered, in this new language of starlight and death and songs.

You're a miracle, unfulfilled, waiting.

He sometimes asked himself how many others like him were out there. Wingless birds, falling into the sea, into the dark that pools the sky and makes the shine of miracles ever brighter. Fished out and taken aboard a star vessel, at the last minute. By lovers, by friends, by family.

All light reflects equally on water.

He wondered how many other ghosts wandered the city carrying miracles they were ripped from fulfilling in the life they'd left behind.

You're water.

The print on the page carried no color, the letters black and greasily runny, the ink had been handled at great haste and with no delicacy. Peter could just picture Pearly being confronted by whichever of the magpies had spotted him and Cecil under the Brooklyn Bridge last January, becoming consumed by panic and shouting demands for posters and search parties.

He's alive, the bastard's alive! he must have said. Maybe. Who knew.

Or maybe the man who'd spotted them had not told Pearly anything until now. It explained why it was only at this moment, months later, that a poster had been found.

Maybe he'd been a runner, like Peter. One of the handful who'd recoiled and grimaced during his final beating and his descent from the bridge.

Maybe he'd tried to escape. To find gentleness or peace, or summer, in the South. Maybe he'd even found newfound comfort, a release of guilt, in seeing his old comrade alive, or at least present, in the world, despite it all… Maybe Pearly had found him, lost in the wintry maze that rose in Beverly's honor, and beat the heinous truth out of him and returned him to the pits of depravity.

It was all orders.

All orders…

Yes. It was true.

Author's Note: To anyone who is here today, thank you for reading!

I decided to divide this chapter in two cause I feel like sometimes I have to return to my previously-signature move to write shorter, more concise chapters, like I did often in ASITL.

I feel like with some of the chapters of TFOTM I include so much more stuff than in ASITL - which makes sense cause, at the moment, the situations Peter and Beverly are in are way harder to explain than there were before, I base their conditions as spirits on headcanons given how little the world of starfolk is really explained or shown in the movie, I literally spent these last few days finally jotting down every headcanon and plot divergence I've taken in this story so far into one concrete list, in order not to get lost in the madness, so... XD

Yeah, if you can't tell based on my publishing schedule (asides from how much busier I am now than I was two years ago during my first ASITL chapters), TFOTM is significantly more challenging to write than ASITL, plus I'm not really following a specific map of things that need to happen so far, because Abby is not gonna appear in a while and I'm just wandering the world with these characters as much as I can before Peter meets her, but regardless of the challenges I find writing Part 2 of my duology, I feel like my writing for TFOTM is also way better than how I wrote in ASITL. I've grown in my two years of hyperfixation and overplanning for these stories XD and... yeah, I'm very happy with every new chapter I write.

I love returning here, taking further steps forward. It's laborious and it takes a lot of time from my day, and this morning as I was going to uni I had a huge headache that I'm half-convinced is wrought upon by the fact that I spent most of last afternoon working on finishing the whole "September 1917" chapter before splitting it (don't worry about me, for real, I promise I'm not masochistic, plus I always wind up managing my time for everything to balance uni work with my writing, I just have a lot of feelings XD) but it's good tiredness. It's something I put a lot of care into, like my drawings, so I'm not ashamed at all :3

The WANTED poster Peter finds here is an item that does show up in the movie, if barely, but in here I decided to, big surprise, give it much more importance to the actual plot. I have a habit to do that, yes, I know :3 It's a big part of why my fanfics are the way they are.

Anyhoo! 2 chapters today, then. Part 2 coming in a little bit.

Here's your hug *hug*, have a good day!